Climate ChangeClimate ChangeReRe--Framing Management Framing Management

StrategiesStrategies

Connie Millar24 April 2007 National Leadership Team Mtg

USDA Forest ServicePacific Southwest Research Station

Sierra Nevada Research CenterAlbany and Lee Vining, CA

Accept Uncertainty Yet Certain Change Accept Uncertainty Yet Certain Change as Premises for Decisionas Premises for Decision--MakingMaking

Practice ecological management outside the box- existing management paradigms have limited value

Manage for desired future processes-ecosystem services writ large

Forests of the Future:Forests of the Future:Embracing ChangeEmbracing Change

TOOLBOX APPROACHTOOLBOX APPROACHNo single solution fits all casesRange of options for short & long termMix & match toolsBe flexible, experimental (learn-as-you-go),

innovative, bridges kept intact, small steps, risk-taking, course-correcting

Climate and Vegetation models:Healthy skepticism: Cannot predict the future at accuracy needed by managers

“eggs in one basket” vs “bet-hedging” strategies

Confronting Climate ChangeConfronting Climate ChangeI.I. Adaptation StrategiesAdaptation Strategies

Assist ecosystems to accommodate changes imposed by climate

II. Mitigation StrategiesMitigation StrategiesAssist ecosystems to reduce human effects on climate by sequestering CO2and reducing greenhouse gas emissions

Strategic & Tactical: “5-R + 1” Strategies

Complementary Conflicting

A. Burnett

1. Increase ResistanceResistance to Change

BC: lodgepole pine & mountain pine beetle

BC Forest Service

“Homeland Security Approach”Defend high-value resources against change

Short term strategies: “paddling upstream”

*Adaptation strategy* Carroll 2006, BC Ministry of Forests

2. Promote ResilienceResilience to Change

• Improve the capacity of ecosystems to return to prior conditions after disturbance

• Reduce stress, minimize vulnerabilities

Mgmt Examples- Thin Stands- Prescribe Fires- Stock Seed Banks- Make Snow at Ski Areas- Increase TES

Population Sizes

*Adaptation strategy*

3. Enable Ecosystems to RespondRespond to Change

* Assist Ecosystems to Follow Changing Climates* Assist Ecosystems to Follow Changing ClimatesUse climate projections at coarse scale to plan options

(assisted migration; “off-site” plantations)

“Eggs-in–One-Basket”approaches

*Adaptation strategy*

* Anticipate and Plan for Associated Risks* Anticipate and Plan for Associated RisksForest Dieback, Fires in Subalpine Forests; Off-Season & Year-

Round Fires, Extreme Wind and Flood Events…

3-Sisters Wilderness, OR

Cascade Crest Complex, OR

Yosemite Valley Flood

Derecho Event, MN

* Experiment Creatively & Learn From Experiments* Experiment Creatively & Learn From Experiments

2. Relax Genetic Management Guidelines

Spread-the-riskand bet-hedging

approaches

1. Use Redundancy

* * Increase DiversityIncrease Diversity In resort communities…

In the forest…

N Forest Products Assoc

* Promote Connected Landscapes* Promote Connected Landscapes- Larger mgmt units - Lower fragmentation- Higher mgmt decision flexibility - Continuous riparian zones

4. RealignRealign Conditions to Current DynamicsFor systems far out of the range of natural variability this may be a useful “restoration” option

Mono Lake, CAAquatic Ecosystem

DWP diversions began

*Adaptation strategy*

5. ReduceReduce Greenhouse Gases &ReduceReduce Ecological Footprint

• Forestry Sector (Rich Birdsey)

Afforest non-forest areas

Reduce deforestation

Keep carbon in long-lived wood products or make green energy

A. Burnett

• Energy Sector (Anna Crabtree)

*Mitigation strategy*

OVERALL: Set PrioritiesPrioritiesConfront What Can and Cannot be Done* Sensitive & vulnerable vs resistant & resilient

TRIAGE: “Sort & Tag”Red Urgent, treatableYellow Mid urgency; soon

to become redGreen Stable, low priority

Black Untreatable, lowest priority: = no action

**********************Re-assess frequently

Practice triage as appropriate

C. Donohue

Confronting Climate ChangeConfronting Climate ChangeManagement

Decisions

Do Nothing:No Advance Planning

Be Proactive: Plan in Advance

React after Disturbance or Extreme Events

Managing In The Face of ChangeManaging In The Face of ChangeA Toolbox of OptionsA Toolbox of Options

Adaptation StrategiesAdaptation Strategies*Create Resistance*Increase Resilience*Allow Ecosystems to Respond*Realign Highly Altered Ecosystems

Mitigation Strategies*Reduce Greenhouse Gases & Ecologic Footprint

Overall*Set Priorities (incl Triage approaches)

Climate Change; Re-Framing Management Strategies Notes to accompany PowerPoint Presentation, USFS National Leadership Team Meeting

April 24, 2007, New Orleans, LA

Connie Millar USDA Forest Service, PSW Research Station

Sierra Nevada Research Center, Albany, CA 94701 cmillar@fs.fed.us; 510-559-6435

Slide 1 My presentation carries the discussion from the previous speakers further into discussion of management strategies by addressing the question, “What can be done in the face of climate change”? I attempt to tie threads from previous speakers into an overall conceptual framework. Linda Joyce follows this presentation with concrete examples from national forests and illustrating on-the-ground examples of what has and can be done. Slide 2 A fundamental premise underlying this discussion is that managers will embrace uncertainty yet certain change in the future. Managing in a context of unpredictability is more important than ever before. Existing management paradigms (e.g., historic range of variation, ecological sustainability, ecological integrity, healthy forests) may have limited value because they assume, implicitly or explicitly, that the future will be similar to the past – that is, they anticipate a static background to ecological succession. Already we understand this is inappropriate; it is expected to become increasingly unrealistic in the future. A dynamic approach to management, by contrast, emphasizes process rather than composition and structure. Our focus will best consider maintaining and restoring ecological functions, and defining desired future process rather than desired future condition. Slide 3 Because management situations will differ, and because change and unpredictability over the 20th century are anticipated to increase, a toolbox approach to management will provide the most flexibility for developing robust management strategies. These imply that no single solution fits all cases, that climate change is not an “add-on” management issue but a new way of viewing everything we do, that there will be different approaches for short and long terms, and that managers may best mix and match tools to fit different situations. Options presented in this talk may appear conflicting – this is only because very different approaches may best be used in different situations. Decision makers will recognize that dynamic approaches are characterized as being flexible, experimental (which means to learn as you go – which implies adaptive management in the broadest sense), innovative, ready to reverse decisions as needed. Sometimes small and incremental steps will be best; other times risk-taking and abrupt changes in management direction will be called for. Being able to learn as you go means that course-correcting is built into decisions. Regarding quantitative models and projections of future climate and future vegetation scenarios, I suggest a note of caution. While models are valuable in providing general information about the nature of change, their primary use is to game future possibilities and to understand the nature of processes of change. Most importantly they are not precise pictures of the future, especially at the spatial and temporal scales at which national forest managers work. Sometimes general information from models will be adequate to make decisions; most often it will be more important to assume a backdrop of uncertainty rather than specific change in direction and degree.

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Depending on the level of acceptable risk, a manager might opt to work with the results of models (“eggs in one basket”) or accept a background of uncertainty and accommodate risk generally (“bet-hedging” strategies). Slide 4 A manager’s conceptual toolbox contains two primary strategies in the face of changing climates: Adaptation Strategies and Mitigation Strategies. Adaptation Strategies are those management actions that help ecosystems to accommodate the changes that arise as a result of changing climates. These are the familiar stewardship and conservation goals to which the USFS has long responded – now only the driving forces are different: habitat and species conservation, ecological restoration, healthy forest and range ecosystems. The goals and, thus, the management actions differ in a climate-change context in that the background environment will be one of change rather than an assumption of general continuity of environment. Mitigation Strategies are those management actions that enable forest and range ecosystems to contribute to solutions for anthropogenic effect on climate, that is, actions that contribute to carbon sequestration, reduction of carbon emissions, and carbon-pump functions. Fortunately these two goals (Adaptation and Mitigation) will often complement each other: best management practices to assist ecosystems in adapting to change will often be the same as best carbon management practices. In some situations, however, the goals will compete and conflict. It remains the manager’s challenge to evaluate trade-offs, find compromises, integrate conflicting desires, and reach best decisions. I further outline options within these two primary strategies as the “5 – R + 1” approaches. Slide 5 The first “R” adaptation approach is to increase Resistance to effects of climate change. The goal is to aggressively defend high-value resources against undesired effects of climate. An example comes from the consequences of native mountain pine beetle (MPB) on lodgepole pine forests of western North America. MPB is a native insect, which has been limited by temperature to west-slope (west of the Continental Divide) forests in recorded history. Warming temperatures have allowed it to cross the Divide, and infect forests of lodgepole and related Jack pines east of the Divide. In Jack pine, the concern is that MPB will act as an exotic invasive species, cross boreal Canada forests, potentially infest related pine forests of the eastern North America seaboard, and potentially reach the valued southern US industrial pine forests. A resistance strategy would be to aggressively limit MPB from passing through the bottleneck in British Columbia at the Continental Divide. Resistance strategies should be recognized as short-term. Directional climate changes accumulate and eventually resistance may be futile (“paddling upstream”); then major changes may occur in undesirable manner. Slide 6 Promoting Resilience is an oft-described approach to managing resources under climate change context. Here the goal is to assist resources to return to prior desired conditions and processes after disturbance by reducing ecosystem stress. Reducing stresses can be achieved in various ways, as illustrated by examples listed in the slide. Each of these examples has the goal of assisting ecosystems to rebound after disturbance. Slide 7

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Enabling ecosystems to Respond to changes imposed by climate (and other stressors and agents of change) is a third and most pro-active adaptation option. There are many options for assisting change – the goal is to “ease transitions” from current to future states, and minimize abrupt and undesired sudden regime shifts. Sometimes climate models will be robust enough given risk-analysis for managers to accept general directions of anticipated future climates and vegetation conditions (at coarse-filter). In these cases, managers may opt to assist ecosystems to follow changing climates through assisted migration and off-site plantations or restorations. There is an emerging literature suggesting options for moving species, germplasm, plantations, etc. in the direction of anticipated change. When these approaches are undertaken, the manager should understand that they are “eggs in one basket” options – that is, if the models are wrong, there is a risk that the management actions will fail. Slide 8 Anticipating and planning for climate-associated risks is another option for helping ecosystems respond to climate effects. Novel effects under changed climates include those listed on the slide – and many more. Slide 9 Experimenting creatively and learning from experiments will be very important under conditions of rapid environmental change. By this is meant to practice adaptive management in the broadest sense. When a manager’s risk level is greater than the available modeling capacity, it is best to manage for change per se, and spread risks through “bet-hedging” decisions. Using redundancy is an example of spreading risks: plantations might be sited outside traditional “optimum sites”, even at species’ range margins. In doing so, it will be very important to monitor the effects of these “experiments”. Relaxing traditionally strict genetic management guidelines is another option for spreading risks under a future of uncertainty. Rather than limiting seedlots for revegetation or restoration to the local seedzone, a manager may experiment with an admixture of germplasm from adjacent zones, thereby increasing genetic diversity, with the goal that the environment will choose (through natural selection) the fittest genotypes for the current climate. These experimental contexts require careful documentation, monitoring, and course-correcting as conditions and consequences dictate. Slide 10 Increasing diversity in general is an adaptive approach under many management contexts, and another example of how managers might assist ecosystems or resources to follow changing environments. In a forestry context, transitioning forest plantations or native forests from single-species and even-age cohorts to higher vertical (within stand) and horizontal (landscape) structural diversity would be a goal. An assumption is that greater diversity equates to greater resilience and options for sustaining changing and unpredictable conditions. Promoting landscape continuity is another adaptation goal for assisting ecosystems to respond to changing climates. Under naturally changing climates of the historic past, species adapted to change by migrating to locations where conditions were favorable. Many human constructs now limit the capacity for species to migrate through the landscape -- especially for plant species, which migrate via death on one end of species’ ranges and invasion by seed on favorable margins. Promoting connectivity through the examples listed on the slide will assist species find their own favored habitat – this is far more likely to succeed than through managers or scientists outguessing species’ response from quantitative models. Slide 11

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A fourth adaptation strategy is to Re-Align ecosystems that are far out of the natural range of historic conditions to current and future dynamics. Re-alignment may be thought of as an alternate term for “restoration”, which has come to imply a return to historic or pre-disturbance target conditions. Because the latter (past conditions) are likely ill-adaptive for a different future, re-alignment is an approach for re-setting ecological trajectories onto adaptive courses. An example is the Mono Lake ecosystem in eastern California. This was an aquatic ecosystem threatened by collapse from water diversions since 1941. A court-order restoration resulted not in return to pre-1941 lake levels, but to re-alignment with present conditions: water balance models were built that took into account current and future likely climates and other water-related conditions. Slide 12 Mitigation strategies are mentioned in this talk to remind managers that adaptation approaches will increasingly need to be integrated with carbon management considerations. The NLT presentations by Rich Birdsey (forest carbon options) and Ann Crabtree (sustainable operations) gave much detail on the “5th R” strategy of Reducing greenhouse gases and sequestering carbon. There are many unknowns in carbon accounting, life-cycle analysis, and carbon policy that await analysis before forest and resource managers will be able to understand best options. In the meantime, it is important that decision-makers begin to consider the compromises and approaches to integrating best management practices for adaptation with those that will involve mitigation. Another suite of “reduction strategies” are those sustainable operations decisions to conserve and reduce energy consumption, use alternate (non-fossil fuel) energy sources, and foster carbon-neutral behavior. Slide 13 Overall, whether managers make adaptation or mitigation choices, Priority-Setting will be more important under climate-change contexts than in the past (Priority setting is the “+ 1” strategy). When environmental or social changes occur rapidly and institutional capacity to respond becomes increasingly limited, resource managers may consider adopting systematic approaches for decision-making under emergency conditions, such as incident-command or medical triage approaches. In the latter, triage comes from the French, triare, meaning “to sort”, and management situations are sorted by their urgency and by the available capacity to deal with the situation effectively. Most urgent situations that can be accommodated with available staff, resources, and money will be given highest priority. Less urgent situations are deliberately put to later attention. Important in a triage situation is the category of urgent cases that need immediate attention but for which there is not institutional capacity to respond. These situations, contrary to common wisdom, are deliberately relegated to no-action. Triage and other emergency-response priority-setting approaches work well only in the short-term, and are rarely appropriate for long-term planning. Slide 14 Resource managers and decision makers confront climate change in their planning processes under three different junctures. They may take: 1) No action. This may result either from an inability or incapacity to deal with climate, denial that it is important, lack of knowledge in how to respond, or as the conclusion from a deliberate, defensible priority-setting process (as in slide 13). 2) React after Disturbance. Managers may respond to climate after disturbance (which can be thought of as symptoms of climate change). For instance, after severe fire, silviculturalists may choose to plant different species or species’ mixes than in the past to accommodate effects of changing site conditions. This option mimics the natural processes under which many species and ecosystems would adapt to changing environments. The drawback, however, is that the disturbances endured may be far more severe than desired, and far more severe than if earlier actions had been taken.

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3) Proactive Practices. The most proactive choice is deliberate actions taken in advance to accommodate anticipated changes. While these may seem as yet unnecessary to many managers, these proactive actions will likely mitigate the severity of disturbance or change/transition that may occur without accommodating practices. Slide 15 This slide summarizes the main points made in this presentation: the toolbox of management options contains Adaptation as well as Mitigation Strategies – with further options under the “5R + 1” approaches. These include 1) creating Resistance to change, 2) increasing Resilience to disturbance, 3) assisting ecosystems to Respond to change, 4) Re-aligning highly altered systems (Adaptation Options), and 5) Reducing the human effects on climate through forestry options that reduce greenhouse gases and sequester carbon, as well as changes in the way forest operations are conducted (energy conservation, alternate energy, carbon neutral practices). In all cases, priority setting will be more important than ever, and in particular, approaches that enable mangers to make and defend choices under high urgency and conditions where demand is far greater than capacity to respond.

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Adaptation and mitigation are complementary strategic approaches to resource management in the context of climate change and uncertainty. • Adaptation strategies include management actions that assist ecosystems to accommodate climate-imposed changes. They seek to minimize undesired and/or abrupt (catastrophic) responses that might occur without intervention and assistance. • Mitigation strategies include management actions that assist ecosystems to reduce anthropogenic climatic change by sequestering CO2 and reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. • While adaptation and mitigation strategies may occasionally conflict (e.g., even-age, monotypic plantations at landscape scales, or low-diversity but fast-growing short-rotation species conflicting with habitat needs for age-, species, and structural diversity), and trade-offs must be evaluated, best management strategies may be found that incorporate both adaptive and mitigative goals. Adaptation options comprise a range of choices, from forestalling undesired effects of climate and maintaining current structure & function, to assisting transitions to new ecosystem states. • Resistance options are those that protect high-value resources (plantations, endangered species, habitat) by sheltering or defending them from impacts of climatic change. Practices (e.g., aggressive fuel breaks, extensive seed banking) seek to forestall the effects of climate on sensitive and valued conditions. They may be appropriate only in the short term, because as changes accumulate (e.g., temperatures continue to rise), it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain status quo, and undesired and rapid transitions may occur. • Resilience options are those that improve the capacity of ecosystems to maintain or return to current conditions after disturbance. Relieving environmental stresses through stand thinning, mixed species plantations, or reducing fuels reduces the likelihood of extreme disturbance, and promotes ability to endure disturbance. As in resistance, resilience may be achievable only in the short term (“paddling upstream”). • Response options are those that plan for change rather than resisting it, with the goal of enabling or facilitating ecosystems to respond adaptively as environmental changes accrue. Management opportunities include assisted migration (enabling species to migrate by moving seed outside current range limits); planning for redundancy and replication (multiple plantations across environmental gradients and outside traditional “best sites”); expand and relax genetic transfer and diversity guidelines; manage for landscape asynchrony; establish “neo-native” restoration plantations; re-align conditions that are out of natural variation; and promote landscape connectedness through large management units, corridors, and riparian continuity. Setting priorities for action (including no action) is extremely important under situations of rapid change, especially where conditions are urgent, resources are highly valued and sensitive, and institutional capacity to respond is inadequate (limited funds, time, staff, resources, expertise). • Triage, from the French, “to sort”, is a useful, systematic approach for prioritizing high-demand and rapidly changing situations. Triage is used in medical and civil emergencies and can be adapted to resource-management. Triage methodology not only sorts (identifies) situations that are of great urgency and demand high priority for treatment, but also identifies situations that are urgent but untreatable (no action) with current capacity. That the latter may represent a majority of total cases has important implications in public discourse. The few critical yet feasible projects are then most likely to receive effective treatment. • Managers may opt to time their institutional investment to address climate change at three junctures (which we find pertain in current national forest contexts): No anticipatory plans or actions taken; incorporate climate-smart actions after disturbance; or proactively plan in advance for anticipated changes. Priority-setting exercises may dictate that different situations are addressed in one or the other of these times (e.g., some may be chosen for pro-active planning while others are best addressed by no action at present).

CONTACT: Connie Millar, USDA Forest Service, Sierra Nevada Research Center, PSW Research Station, Albany, CA; email: cmillar@fs.fed.us, ph: 510-559-6435